More than 25,000 property owners have failed to show up for their appeal hearings because most of them were happy with their informal appeals, according to county officials.

But Van Osdol reported there have been numerous cases of paperwork being lost.

“If you told me they did it from outer space, I'd believe you. There's no way the people who assessed this property and this house walked on this property,” homeowner Michael Quinn said of his reassessment.

The assessment of Quinn’s house in O’Hara Township went up 64 percent, mostly due to what assessors called a two-story addition.

Quinn filed an informal appeal, and a hearing officer recommended his assessment be reduced from $160,000 to $139,000 in April.

Quinn said he waited for an answer but never got one, so he called the hotline number and was told the new figures went through.

But in September, he received a letter from the county saying his informal hearing resulted in virtually no change and his formal hearing was scheduled in two weeks.

Quinn called the assessment office and said he was told, “This has happened to a number of people, but your stuff got lost.”

County officials confirmed there were some cases of missing paperwork, but they could not say how many.

Van Osdol encountered hundreds of appeal letters sitting in the county assessment office.

The letters were marked “return to sender” because the county sent them to the wrong address.

With 100,000 appeals filed, state Sen. Wayne Fontana said he’s not surprised there were glitches.

“The fact of the matter is when you have this much volume, something's going to fall through the cracks,” said Fontana.

But that doesn’t make it any easier on property owners.

“It's disrespectful to every single property owner in Allegheny County,” Quinn said.

The county has delayed the appeal hearings for Quinn and others who had lost paperwork, but it's unclear why there were so many returned letters.

A representative for Allegheny County Chief Executive Rich Fitzgerald said property owners are responsible for giving the county correct mailing addresses.